The present disclosure relates to a protective packaging structure formed from a foldable material such as cardboard, fiberboard, or corrugated plastic, for one or more articles and to a method for making protective packaging structures.
In the field of commercial shipments and logistics, the strength of packaging and its ability to provide safety and protection to the packaged product is critical for a great variety of consumer goods. Unfortunately, it is a common occurrence for shipping packages and parcels to take abuse during transit, resulting in damage of the merchandise they carry. Such shipment damage involves additional costs and operations, such as return of the damaged product to the seller or manufacturer, discard of the damaged product, re-shipping of the replacement product, issuing refunds and/or processing insurance claims.
A primary goal of packaging is to minimize the risk of such occurrences by protecting the packaged article from falls, impacts and crushing weight during storage, handling and transportation. At the same time, for manufacturing costs and environmental considerations, the packaging needs to be formed from as little material as possible and cause as little material waste during production as possible. Another consideration is discarding the packaging upon delivery of the product, which is becoming an environmental issue of growing importance worldwide. It is greatly desirable for as many packaging components as possible to be 100% recyclable.
The prior art includes various types of packaging materials and designs. Examples of best packaging practices known so far include inner packs and dividers, bubble wrap, wrapping all articles at high or moderate risk individually, packing peanuts, inflated air bags, molded pulp inserts, expanded foam and combinations thereof. However, conventional packaging is only marginally effective, or expensive to manufacture, or not environmentally friendly.
Accordingly, there exists a need for packaging that provides better protection to the product inside, requires minimum manufacturing material and cost with minimum material waste. Additionally, there is a need for packaging made from material that is 100% recyclable and/or reusable.
Prior methods for developing and making protective packaging include an often onerous and imprecise process. They involve projecting the two dimensional profile of an article on a flat piece of cardboard to be cut out to create a flat master blank. This process requires numerous calculations or a significant amount of trial and error to place the cuts in their correct location. This results in wasted time and material.